AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EST

Call to remove Black pastors adds to agony in Arbery’s town

BRUNSWICK. Ga. (AP) — Race was always going to be at the forefront of the trial of three white men charged with chasing and killing Ahmaud Arbery,a 25-year-old Black man, in a coastal Georgia neighborhood.

But a defense attorney’s quickly rejected call to kick out Black pastors, including Jesse Jackson, from the Glynn County courtroom intensified frustrations and added fresh agony to a lingering wound that many in the community had hoped the trial could start healing.

About a mile from the courthouse in the majority Black city of Brunswick, Tony Bryant has been following the proceedings.

Sitting outside the front door of his apartment with peeling teal paint and a view of cranes at the state of Georgia’s port along the East River, he said the way race has seeped into the trial has been discouraging but not surprising — from seating an almost all-white jury when 27% of Glynn County’s 85,000 people are Black to trying to kick out Jackson and other pastors.

“Three white men killed a Black guy. Come on, man. Who did they think was going to be there to support his family?” Bryant said.

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Rapper Young Dolph fatally shot at Tennessee cookie shop

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Rapper Young Dolph, widely admired in the hip-hop community for his authenticity and fierce independence, was shot and killed Wednesday inside a beloved local cookie shop in his hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, authorities said.

Police tweeted they had no information to release about a possible suspect in the shooting, which took place at Makeda’s Cookies near Memphis International Airport.

“The tragic shooting death of rap artist Young Dolph serves as another reminder of the pain that violent crime brings with it,” Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said in a statement.

The Daily Memphian newspaper reported that Young Dolph’s cousin, Mareno Myers, said the 36-year-old rapper had been in town since Monday visiting an aunt who has cancer and was also giving out Thanksgiving turkeys.

“He was inside (Makeda’s), and somebody just rolled up on him and took his life,” Myers said.

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Biden pushes electric vehicle chargers as energy costs spike

DETROIT (AP) — President Joe Biden punched the accelerator on a battery-powered Hummer on Wednesday, causing the wheels to squeal and the truck to jet forward as he tried in his own way to drive the country toward an electric vehicle future.

The engine was quiet as the president pulled up to a waiting delegation of reporters and officials.

“Anyone wanna jump in the back?” Biden asked.

The president had just toured a General Motors plant in Detroit to showcase how his newly signed $1 trillion infrastructure law could transform the auto industry.

He is highlighting billions of dollars in his giant bipartisan infrastructure deal to pay for the installation of electric vehicle chargers across the country, an investment he says will go a long way to curbing planet-warming carbon emissions while creating good-paying jobs. It’s also an attempt to leapfrog China in the plug-in EV market. Currently, the U.S. market share of plug-in electric vehicle sales is one-third the size of the Chinese EV market.

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Rittenhouse lawyers ask judge to declare mistrial over video

KENOSHA, Wis. (AP) — Kyle Rittenhouse’s attorneys asked the judge to declare a mistrial even as the jury in the murder case was deliberating Wednesday, saying the defense received an inferior copy of a potentially crucial video from prosecutors.

Judge Bruce Schroeder did not immediately rule on the request, the second mistrial motion from the defense in a week. The jury deliberated a second full day without reaching a verdict and will return in the morning.

At issue was a piece of drone video that prosecutors showed to the jury in closing arguments in a bid to undermine Rittenhouse’s self-defense claim and portray him as the instigator of the bloodshed in Kenosha in the summer of 2020. Prosecutors said the footage showed him pointing his rifle at protesters before the shooting erupted.

Rittenhouse attorney Corey Chirafisi said the defense initially received a smaller compressed version of the video and didn’t get the higher-quality larger one used by the prosecution until the evidence portion of the case was over.

He said that the defense would have approached things differently if it had received the better footage earlier and that it is now asking for “a level, fair playing field.”

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2 men set to be cleared in the 1965 killing of Malcolm X

NEW YORK (AP) — Two of the three men convicted in the assassination of Malcolm X are set to be cleared Thursday after insisting on their innocence since the 1965 killing of one of the United States’ most formidable fighters for civil rights, their lawyers and Manhattan’s top prosecutor said Wednesday.

A nearly two-year-long re-investigation found that authorities withheld evidence favorable to the defense in the trial of Muhammad Aziz, now 83, and the late Khalil Islam, said their attorneys, the Innocence Project and civil rights lawyer David Shanies.

Aziz called his conviction “the result of a process that was corrupt to its core — one that is all too familiar” even today.

“I do not need a court, prosecutors or a piece of paper to tell me I am innocent,” he said in a statement. But he said he was glad his family, friends and lawyers would get to see “the truth we have all known, officially recognized.”

He urged the criminal justice system to “take responsibility for the immeasurable harm it caused me.”

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Portland among US cities adding funds to police departments

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Night after night, hundreds of people marched the streets of Oregon’s largest city, demanding racial justice after the murder of George Floyd by a white officer.

Among the rallying cries were “defund the police” — a call for elected officials to reallocate some law enforcement funding elsewhere. In June 2020, the Portland City Council and the mayor answered by cutting millions from the police budget.

Now, a year and a half later, officials partially restored the cut funds. On Wednesday, the Portland City Council unanimously passed a fall budget bump that included increasing the current $230 million police budget by an additional $5.2 million. The added police spending is occurring amid a year of a record number of homicides, the city’s greatest police staffing shortage in decades and reform recommendations made by the U.S. Department of Justice.

“Many Portlanders no longer feel safe,” Mayor Ted Wheeler said. “And it is our duty, as leaders of this city, to take action and deliver better results within our crisis response system.”

Portland isn’t the only liberal city doing an about-face on police spending. From New York City to Los Angeles — in cities that had some of the largest Black Lives Matter protests, and some with an extensive history of police brutality — police departments are seeing their finances partially restored in response to rising homicides, an officer exodus and political pressures.

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China coast guard blocks Philippine boats in disputed sea

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Chinese coast guard ships blocked and used water cannons on two Philippine supply boats heading to a disputed shoal occupied by Filipino marines in the South China Sea, provoking an angry protest to China and a warning from the Philippine government that its vessels are covered under a mutual defense treaty with the United States, Manila’s top diplomat said Thursday.

Philippine Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. said no one was hurt in the incident in the disputed waters on Tuesday, but the two supply ships had to abort their mission to provide food supplies to Filipino forces occupying the Second Thomas Shoal, which lies off western Palawan province in the Philippines’ internationally recognized exclusive economic zone.

Locsin said in a tweet that the three Chinese coast guard ships’ actions were illegal and he asked them “to take heed and back off.”

The Philippine government has conveyed to China “our outrage, condemnation and protest of the incident,” Locsin said, adding that “this failure to exercise self-restraint threatens the special relationship between the Philippines and China” that President Rodrigo Duterte and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, have worked hard to nurture.

There was no immediate comment from Chinese officials in Manila or Beijing.

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EXPLAINER: What’s behind Rittenhouse mistrial requests?

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Attorneys for Kyle Rittenhouse have requested a mistrial based on several issues, including claims that prosecutors acted in bad faith and that the state gave them an inferior copy of video that may be a key piece of evidence in the case.

The defense says some of the issues should result in a mistrial with no chance for a retrial, while one could give prosecutors the option to try Rittenhouse again.

Here’s a look at the mistrial requests and what they mean:

MISTRIAL WITH PREJUDICE

The defense made its first request for a mistrial last week and followed up on Monday with a written motion, seeking a mistrial with prejudice based on three issues.

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US overdose deaths topped 100,000 in one year, officials say

NEW YORK (AP) — An estimated 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in one year, a never-before-seen milestone that health officials say is tied to the COVID-19 pandemic and a more dangerous drug supply.

Overdose deaths have been rising for more than two decades, accelerated in the past two years and, according to new data posted Wednesday, jumped nearly 30% in the latest year.

President Joe Biden called it “a tragic milestone” in a statement, as administration officials pressed Congress to devote billions of dollars more to address the problem.

“This is unacceptable and it requires an unprecedented response,” said Dr. Rahul Gupta, director of National Drug Control Policy.

Experts believe the top drivers of overdose deaths are the growing prevalence of deadly fentanyl in the illicit drug supply and the COVID-19 pandemic, which left many drug users socially isolated and unable to get treatment or other support.

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Mississippi executes man who killed wife, terrorized family

PARCHMAN, Miss. (AP) — A man who pleaded guilty to killing his estranged wife and sexually assaulting her young daughter as her mother lay dying was put to death Wednesday evening, becoming the first inmate executed in Mississippi in nine years.

David Neal Cox, 50, abandoned all appeals and filed court papers calling himself “worthy of death” before the state Supreme Court set his execution date. He appeared calm as he received a lethal injection. A coroner pronounced him dead at 6:12 p.m. CST at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.

Cox pleaded guilty in 2012 to capital murder for the May 2010 shooting death of his estranged wife, Kim Kirk Cox. He also pleaded guilty to multiple other charges, including sexual assault. A jury handed down the death sentence.

Cox wore a red prison jumpsuit and was covered by a white sheet during the execution. Wide leather straps held him down on a gurney.

“I want my children to know that I love them very much and that I was a good man at one time,” Cox said just before the injection started. “Don’t ever read anything but the King James Bible.”